Tagged: media

The focus of debate: PM Rudd ‘pats’ a woman with disability on the head.

This picture of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd ‘patting’ a woman with disability on the head during an event to mark the official start of DisabilityCare (formerly the National Disability Insurance Scheme) this week has sparked discussion among disability advocates, and an online tête à tête between those who feel the PM lacked respect, and those who think the whole thing is a storm in a tea cup.

We are a society that treats people with disabilities with condescension and pity, not dignity and respect. You don’t need to look much further than the new title of the National Disability Insurance Scheme, DisabilityCare, to see that.

We are also a society fiercely protective of our right to be condescending and pitying towards disabled people, because society views disability as being necessarily and routinely pitiable.

Others have considered much of the response to the ‘incident’ to be an over-reaction. Leading the ‘over-reaction’ team is journalist and commentator Joe Hildebrand. Some of his Twitter exchange with Ms Young is below.

Mr Hildebrand has since written an opinion piece in The Telegraph. The headline ‘Exclusive: Kevin Rudd hates disabled people – the incredible proof inside’ is a pretty good indication of what the rest of the article is like. But, in the name of balance, this is a sample of the article.

It is fair to ask that if a smiling Prime Minister and a laughing woman embracing each other to celebrate the introduction of the National Disability Insurance Scheme leaves Stella “shaking with rage”, what exactly does it take to make her happy?

One unfortunate conclusion is that she never will be. Rather that she, like many on the extreme left, and indeed the extreme right – neither of which are any friends of mine – will never be happy. Instead both sets of malcontents seem to prefer to pore through any trough of information searching for things to be upset about.

The microscopic banality of this outrage was so idiotic that only a fool would enter into it, and so naturally I did.

For me, the debate brings a recent comment made by Australia’s Chief of Army David Morrison to mind.

Speaking about a series of controversies that have undermined the Australian Defence Force, Lieutenant General Morrison said: ‘The standard you walk past is the standard you accept’. His entire video address is one of the most impressive things I’ve seen for a very long time.

Lt Gen. Morrison’s message resonates with this disability discussion. For me, it’s about respect. If we accept the PM meant no harm, which I’m sure is the case, should that stop us from drawing the issue to his and everyone’s attention?

If no-one says: ‘Hey, that’s not on. That’s not respectful. That’s not equality’ – then it will happen again.

It’s no different to not challenging people when they use the ‘R’ word or ‘tard’ to describe themselves, friends, or anyone. It devalues, and it embeds a flawed societal standard.

Thankfully, it is not as it may appear. The ‘bombing’ in ‘stair-bombing’ is more akin to ‘photo-bombing’ than, say, the bombing of Darwin, and the ‘bomber’ is more like Snoopy than Paul Tibbetts.

Of all the places one might imagine you could meet a ‘bomber’, of any model, the Society for Disability Studies Annual Conference may not come first to mind. But, indeed, that’s the scene of this unlikely occurrence. In fact, far from a stereotypical shadowy and seedy backstreet tavern, this coming-together manifested in the plush lobby of the Double Tree by Hilton (Entrance to Universal Studios) in Orlando, at a table populated by four others (names withheld to protect the innocent).

There was no smoke-filled air, no feeling of impending doom, or even secret service agents revealing themselves from behind the nearby cocktail bar. It was, in truth, a relaxed affair.

The ‘stair-bomber’ showed himself to be Jeff Preston, a mild-manner media and disability academic from the University of Western Ontario. His approach to the story was simple. He would tell it straight, pull no punches, and try not to spill his drink. His demeanor was calm, but it belied the impact of his revelations (not to mention intermittent explosions of laughter from teller and listener of tale).

He revealed, in 2011, he and a colleague, Clara Madrenas, set out, as many practitioners of civil disobedience do, to raise awareness of their cause. The ‘stair-bombers’ were determined to draw attention to the lack of accessibility in public places for people who use wheelchairs.

Preston, who uses a wheelchair, and Madrenas carried out their first mass stair-bomb on 1 May, 2011, in London, Onatario.

The pair, who are also the creators of Cripz, a web-comic that addresses the issues facing people with disability in Ontario, Canada, taped-off stairwells, making it difficult, if not impossible, for people to use the stairs.

People who approached the stairs faced a barricade – caution tape and a sign that read: “Caution: These Stairs are Out of Service—Inconvenient Eh? This is only an example of what persons with disabilities experience every day.”

“Perhaps by giving people the ‘disabled’ experience, they might not only empathize with our concerns but also be motivated to fight for our rights,” he says.

“It’s about forcing people to ask themselves, ‘How does it feel to be told there are places in this world that you cannot go, simply because of your mode of transportation?’”

Two years on, Preston is comfortable in his notoriety as a ‘stair-bomber’, and is confident the campaign had an impact. He reflected on a visit to a university campus where he was to give a public lecture on disability, only to find the campus in ‘near lock-down’ because university hierarchy had learned there was a ‘bomber’ in its midst. Eds Note: It does seem suitably ‘Canadian’ that they were so polite as to allow a ‘bomber’ on campus at all.

For me, the father of a boy, Mac, 10, who uses a wheelchair, the question of access is ever-present. A recent example being our visit to the aforementioned Universal Studios, where, despite paying full price, Mac, could only enjoy a small handful (three) of the rides for which the park is famous. He loved Shrek, Despicable Me, and Twister (more a movie experience than a ride). The first two were ‘4D’ virtual rides, with stationary platforms for people using wheelchairs (providing an accessible but somewhat limited experience). I must add, there are other rides for people who use wheelchairs, but the person needs to be able to hold-on and/or have reliable head control. That’s not Mac.

A more local example is the main campus of the University of Wollongong (my university). There are stairs everywhere, and, yes, a good supply of ramps. However, there are places where a person with a wheelchair cannot access, or, at least, access easily. The ‘stair-bombers’ could well find themselves rolling out the ‘caution’ tape once again.

Words have the power to inspire and empower, but they also have the capacity to dehumanise and exclude.

The racism in sport debate, reignited in recent days by the verbal attack on Sydney Swans star and dual Brownlow Medallist Adam Goodes, has served to reinforce the power of words.

Literally from one side of the fence at the MCG on Friday night, we saw the power words have to debase when used without consideration. One word from a 13-year-old Victorian country girl, whether intentionally racist or not, did what most of Goodes’ AFL opponents have failed to do … the assault forced the champion from the field.

The incident was poetically summarised by broadcaster and journalists Gerard Whateley on ABC’s Offsiders program this morning.

So, here’s what it means, there was a man who played with a great sense of pride in a game that was dedicated to his culture. He played with a rare magnificence, that everybody could recognize. The word hurt him so much that he had to recede from sight; he couldn’t stand to be out there and to celebrate his achievement with his teammates. It was a heartbreaking sight to see him in the rooms alone, while his teammates were circling the ground enjoying the moment with the fans.”

However, as he has done on the football field many times in the past, it was Goodes who, a day later, showed the qualities of a true champion. He moved to quell potential fires of retribution and any moves to crucify the teenager, who apologised to Goodes when the opportunity presented itself.

Unfortunately it’s what she hears, the environment she’s grown up in that has made her think it’s ok to call people names. I can guarantee you right now she would have no idea, you know, how it makes anyone feel by calling them an ape. I think, you know, it was just the name calling that she was doing and unfortunately it cut me deep and it affected me so much that I couldn’t even be on the ground last night to celebrate a victory to indigenous round and I’m still shattered personally, yeah it’s tough.”

In what was clearly one of his more demanding assignments, Goodes used the media call to construct a message of hope on the foundation of a tough personal history.

I felt I was in high school again, being bullied, being called all these names because of my appearance. I didn’t stand up for myself in high school, I’m a lot more confident, I’m a lot more proud about who I am and my culture, and I decided to stand up last night and I’ll continue to stand up because racism has no place in our industry, it has no place in our society. Hopefully any person out there that has been name called, that has been verbally abused, can stand up for themselves after what happened last night.”

However, it was Goodes’ reflection on the power of words that will resonate long after the headlines disappear.

I hope standing here and telling people how it has affected me helps people out there. Helps people who have done it in the past know that a simple name, a simple word can cut so deep. Because it happens everywhere, it happens in the schoolyard, at sporting events, it happens while playing sport. People need to know it’s hurtful and the people that don’t stand up for it, it hurts them so much that they don’t want to. It still hurts just as much. It does for me.”

The incident underlines the significance of the term ‘words matter’. What some consider flippant, others consider degrading. What one person delivers a joke, another receives as an attack.

Year in, year out I am forced to pull my students up when they use ‘retard’ as a word of self-deprecation. Like the word that ‘gutted’ Goodes on Friday night, the ‘r-word’ dehumanises people with disability, and entrenches the societal construct of ‘the other’.

Like the uninformed use of ‘ape’ on Friday night, the ‘r-word’ is bandied about by without consideration of its heritage and its impact. The shock expressed by the 13-year-old at the heart of the AFL controversy is not too removed from the dismay students express when they are chipped over the use of ‘retard’ to describe themselves or ‘friends’. These words have, seemingly, been so normalised when used in a derogatory fashion that their meaning, their genetics, and their impact on the recipient are a mystery to the deliverer.

Gerard Whateley, further reflecting on the MCG incident, provided greater insight into our society and the path it needs to follow … now more clearly illuminated by Adam Goodes.

So, if you need something tangible to understand why does it hurt, why does it matter? There it is for you in a sporting context the people can absolutely understand, and then extrapolate to society in general.”

Sometimes you just know you’ve made the right decision. This week was one of those times.

Five years ago, I decided to try my hand at university lecturing. Teaching had always been on my radar, and, in fact, was the second choice behind journalism when I sat down with career adviser Mr O’Brien to discuss my options in 1985.

So, when life dealt the cards that took journalism (at least as I knew it) off the table, teaching again popped its head above the parapet. At this stage, I had started research into disability representation in the media, and one of the first issues revealed during initial inquiries into the subject was ‘exposure’. The argument by Saito and Ishiyama (2005) and others goes along these lines – if journalists are exposed to people with disability in their everyday lives, in and outside the work environment, they are more likely to represent people with disability honestly and fairly, rather than use traditional media models of disability (primarily the tragic, heroic or charity/pity models). Interviews carried out with journalists as part of my research tended to support the hypothesis.

I simply asked:

Has that exposure had any impact on how you write and how you represent people with disability (PWD)?
The answers below are representative of the responses.

Journalist 1

I used to stay in a Steiner Community in the North of England, so I was around adults, Downs Syndrome Adults. I actually remember the trip going to the [Steiner] home, and I remember feeling a bit of fear, a bit of anxiety not knowing what they would be like, how they would treat me, how I should or would treat them, it was the fear of the unknown. Quite quickly, what I found was that they made me feel very at ease in their company, and I began to see them as adults with very strong characters. So I think they were no longer unknown, so that fear, it was one of many encounters I suppose of types of people, aborigines would be another example. Just learning about what’s different and what’s the same and just learning how to relate to people whose experience of life is significantly different to mine in an area or in all areas. So yes, it was part of an ongoing education, which continues and will continue until I die, I suppose. I did anthropology at university, so difference and different people, different cultures and different views of the world is what fascinates me. And that is what’s fascinates me about journalism and keeps me in the style of journalism that I do, it keeps me as a writer. So, for me, disability is another form of anthropology, people who have a different take on life and that interests me.

Journalist 2

Yes, I think it does, although I would hope that it would come across anyway, as I try to look at everyone in the same light. I wouldn’t say those experiences impacted directly on it, I also think that as a journalist or reporter you should be having an open mind and be focusing on everybody in the same way anyway when you are sitting down to write a story or cover a story. You shouldn’t have any preconceptions built up about who or what you are dealing with for that particular story.

Journalist 3

Yes, I have. I don’t think it impacts my reporting in a great sense, but I suppose it means I may initially approach a story with more empathy or more of an understanding of what families and people with a disability experience.

The research and journalist responses encouraged me to embed ‘exposure’ to people with disability into my teaching, in the hope our student journalists would see people with disability as part of the tapestry of humanity, rather than the ‘other’, and, therefore, they would represent people in their journalism with accuracy and fairness (without stereotype and outside the traditional media frames of disability).

So, for the last four years, I have dedicated classes to introducing broadcast journalism students to my son, Mac (who skips school to do it). Mac and his mum, Gina, lead the class discussion, which usually ends in a question and answer session. It is a light-hearted discussion, and Mac, who has Cerebral Palsy, uses his communication devices to let the students know a little but about his life, and to answer their questions. The goal is for everyone to understand disability is natural, and people with disability should be seen in through the same media lens as all others in society.

Gina & Mac lead the discussion at UOW

Mac & Gina with some of the UOW broadcast journalism class, circa 2013.

After Mac and Gina have said their goodbyes, I supplement the gathering with a discussion on media models, terminology, and the capacity for the media (journalists) to set the public agenda. It is acknowledged by McCombs and Shaw (1972) and others that journalists can’t dictate what people think, but it is recognised they can influence what people think about. As future journalists, our students will be able to set the agenda, and, potentially, dedicated more time and space to representing people with disability and the issues they face fairly and accurately.

I leave the students with clear messages:

Represent people with disability as you would represent anyone else. If disability is not the story, there is no need for it to feature.

Disability is natural, and its presence alone does not demand coverage.

I am pleased to say, the messages seem resonate. Just this past week, a student expressed concern about the way a person she planned to feature in a story was representing people with disability. It was a particularly interesting situation, as the student had done all in her power to honestly and fairly represent the people with disability in the story, but the ‘carer’ was equally determined to use stereotypical language to cement the ‘them’ and ‘us’ mentality.

It was great to see my student identify and discuss the issue, but it was equally deflating to know those, seemingly, closest to people with disability are happy to perpetuate negative images through their words and actions.

In 2002, the BBC did something that was impressive in its purpose, and positive in its delivery – it established Ouch. Ouch provides people with disability the opportunity to represent themselves in ways that are different to that we, in the main, see, hear, and read in mainstream media.

Websites dedicated to people with disability and the issues they face are not new, even less so now than in 2002, but more than a decade ago Ouch broke new ground by being an online location for people with disability, by people with disability, that wasn’t charity or advocacy-based, and/or purely information-focused. Among written opinion and pictorial contributions, it is the home of the Ouch Disability Talk Show, and provides a first-person perspective of disability because the articles and items are produced by people with disability.

A few days ago Ouch moved its online presence, it didn’t change its URL but it has undergone a significant facelift. It announced the move with the post below.

The look has changed quite significantly (see below), and you can’t help but think the new site has a distinctly more ‘corporate’ look, as apposed to the more home-spun, but edgy, approach of its predecessor.

Ouch – Then

Ouch – Now

It’s quite clearly a case of personal taste as to which one you prefer (for mine, it’s the original – at least in look, if not functionality).

Ouch raises questions of self-representation in the media. Many a page has been dedicated to studying media representation of people with disability, but there has not been that much space dedicated to analysing the media representation of people with disability by people with disability.

The paper set out to answer numerous questions, but self-representation was at its heart. It simply asked: How are disabled people represented on the BBC website Ouch?

Thoreau said Ouch aimed to deliver a “non-precious representation of disability that recorded life for people with a disability in a way that bridges the gap “… between the way people with disability are represented in the media and they way they want to be represented in the media.”

The study found Ouch delivered a representation of disability that was “substantially” different to that found anywhere else in mainstream media, and concluded this indicated when given the chance to represent themselves, people with disability would do it differently to non-disabled society. Thoreau showed that authors with disabilities and the subjects matter they dealt with were “multidimensional”, “active”, and a wealth of “different personal experiences”.

It could be contended this should come as no surprise. After all, if given the opportunity to represent yourself, you might expect it to fall on the ‘more favourable’ end of the spectrum.

However, it was the representation of non-disabled people that proved the surprise. Thoreau found Ouch articles kept non-disabled people “anonymous and untitled”, and, largely unquoted directly. Interestingly, when non-disabled people where quoted directly or given a name or tile, it was usually in a negative fashion.

Significantly, some of the issues mainstream media is regularly criticised for also surfaced in the Ouch exploration. Thoreau found stereotypes present on the the self-representation website: “Within the sample, there were several examples of stereotypical representations of disability. These included the use of verbs that connote passivity and struggle …”

As Ouch begins its new online era, it is timely to reflect on its impact, the place self-representation occupies in the disability and media discussion, and the role this trailblazing site has played in influencing the likes of Australia’s Ramp Up, and others like it.

The decision to hand one of the key first responsibilities for rolling out the National Disability Scheme in NSW to St Vincent de Paul is a mistake.

I am not the first to raise this concern. Heike Fabig argues a very strong case in Ramp Up. This decision makes you question the commitment of state and federal governments to fixing the broken disability sector in this country.

The Vinnies decision has sparked debate on social media, and this was my contribution.

“I’ll just add my two bobs worth. It is this poorly thought-through approach that has contributed to the broken system we have.

Governments that are too scared to make tough decisions through fear of upsetting entrenched service providers put the entire NDIS process at risk. St Vinnies is, no doubt, a competent service provider, but it is a charity and a religious-based charity at that (let’s not bring God into it).

So, in one ‘simple’ decision, the State Government has constructed this most important of first steps within the frame of charity/pity. How can governments (yes, the Feds could have vetoed this decision), on one hand, argue the NDIS is about empowerment, and, on the other, wash away that empowerment by delivering this key responsibility to an organisation that spends its days helping the disempowered.

Does this not served to embed the representation of people with disability as those who simply need to be ‘looked after’?”